Nothing, really, except the aloe needs a trim and repotting,
flipping chicken wings on the hibachi, maybe tonight,
not about Oakland and the Oatmeal minstrels, faded
photo on my wall, the four or us, forty years ago, high
on guitars, songs, and a gun under Audrey’s pillow, she waiting
for trouble to come though the door at night, and always aiming.
And nothing else, except the croton needs a trimming, which means
white flies up my nose, my ears, and in my eyes, to be
continued and continued, unless the dish soap spray method works,
he says no matter since they will decide themselves when to go,
be it to business school at Wharton or swarm with me in Madison,
how they fly from me who sometimes sought me out, to love, to cry,
to leave, then settle on some faraway final home to die.
Along with nothing else but ceramics I need to study, him watching
over me he wings somewhere out there, one mentor gone,
so unjust how we are not like white flies who can
decide when to wing it off of apples, always, point to the garden,
and two who knew so much of what we still understand so little.
Finally, nothing, except how pakalana has to climb,
find the light to green up, sprout our leaves, then flower, some
sweet smell of a green-thumb success, our trying out,
we all are constant gardeners, on alert, pricked up
for weeds and branches falling, loudly falling, brown leaves
to bag or not to bag, to dump, to come down to organic matter,
going, as we, too, go, all of us essentially go to somewhere,
so many different paths to choose, before the common end
of going to converge somewhere no one knows at all
to meet again beyond is on my mind.
Lanning Lee 